Sarah Mills set out for freedom long before she reached
womanhood; being about sixteen years of age.
She stated that she had been very cruelly treated,
that she was owned by a man named Joseph O’Neil,
“a tax collector and a very bad man.”
Under said O’Neil she had been required to
chop wood, curry horses, work in the field like a man,
and all one winter she had been compelled to go barefooted.
Three weeks before Sarah fled, her mistress was called
away by death; nevertheless Sarah could not forget
how badly she had been treated by her while living.
According to Sarah’s testimony the mistress
was no better than her husband. Sarah came from
Boonsborough, near Hagerstown, Md., leaving her mother
and other relatives in that neighborhood.

It was gratifying to know that such bond-women so
early got beyond the control of slave-holders; yet
girls of her age from having had no pains taken for
their improvement, appealed loudly for more than common
sympathy and humanity, but rarely ever found it; on
the contrary, their paths were beset with great danger.

Caroline Gassway, after being held to service by Summersett
Walters, until she had reached her twenty-seventh
year, was forced, by hard treatment and the love of
freedom, to make an effort for deliverance. Her
appearance at once indicated, although she was just
out of the prison-house, that she possessed more than
an ordinary share of courage, and that she had had
a keen insight into the system under which she had
been oppressed. She was of a dark chestnut color,
well-formed, with a large and high forehead, indicative
of intellect. She had much to say of the ways
and practices of slave-holders; of the wrongs of the
system. She dwelt especially upon her own situation
as a slave, and the character of her master; she told
not only of his ill treatment of her, but described
his physical appearance as well. “He was
a spare-made man, with a red head and quick temper:
he would go off in a flurry like a flash of powder,
and would behave shamefully towards the slaves when
in these fits of passion.” His wife, however,
Caroline confessed was of a different temper, and
was a pretty good kind of a woman. If he had been
anything like his wife in disposition, most likely
Caroline would have remained in bondage. Fortunately,
Caroline was a single woman. She left her mother.